Game Review: No More Heroes 3

No More Heroes is one of those franchises that I have a lot of nostalgia for.  the first game came out back when I was still in middle school (although I wouldn't play it until my second year of high school) and landed in that perfect spot in adolescence where a game where you play as a foul-mouthed, motorcycle-riding weaboo that kills people with a lightsaber was the peak of coolness.  and in my younger self's defense, its still cool as hell and you cannot convince me otherwise.

anyway, all this is to say I went into No More Heroes 3 with fairly high expectations.  originally released in 2021 for the Switch, it came over to Xbox, Playstation, and PC a year later with very little fanfare and got completely missed until a couple months ago when I went "did that ever come to PC?"  No More Heroes 3 continues the story of Travis Touchdown: a spiky haired, leather jacket wearing assassin who wields a beam katana and is exactly as big an asshole (affectionate) as his character art would imply.

this time around, Earth is being invaded by an alien army led by Jess Baptiste VI, or Lord FU as he's referred to 90% of the time.  Travis has to fight his way through the 10 top ranked galactic assassins, all of which work for FU and run the gamut from "guy whose head is a literal black hole with an entire universe inside it" to "galactic musical chairs champion".  as you may have guessed, the story does not take itself very seriously, but before I get into the story, first I gotta talk about the gameplay.

No More Heroes 3 is a fairly straightforward character action game.  you got your light attacks, strong attacks, dodge, block, etc, all the standards.  new for this entry into the series is the Death Glove, which gives you access to 4 extra abilities to use during combat: a dropkick that teleports you to the enemy you're targeting, a telekinetic throw, a circle that slows time in it, and a circle that does damage over time to enemies in it.

combat-wise, the game is great.  while the combo options are fairly nonexistent (you can mash out your light attack combo or your heavy attack combo, no light-light heavy or anything like that here) the death glove abilities add a unique layer of complexity to the game by allowing you ways to manipulate your and your enemies' positions.  this becomes fairly important later in the game when missions start putting you up against multiple minibosses at once.  unfortunately for No More Heroes 3, there's so much more to the gameplay than just the combat.

before fighting a boss, you first need to fight through 3 designated matches, which you can find riding around the city of Santa Destroy on your motorcycle.  once you've done those fights, you have to pay a bunch of money to the UAA (United Assassins Association) to set up the fight with whatever weirdo is next on your hit-list.  if you didn't get enough money completing the designated matches, you can either do defense missions (basically just designated fights that don't give you credit towards unlocking the boss) or partake in various minigames such as: mowing the lawn, picking up trash, or shooting 50 ft tall alligators with a cannon.  normal stuff.

the problem with this structure is that unlike previous games, where each boss is preceded by a sizable level full of combat encounters leading up to an epic boss fight, you just don't get enough time actually playing the video game.  designated matches typically consist of a single group of 3-6 enemies and that's it.  you get there, spend maybe two or three minutes fighting, then its back on your bike to drive through a shockingly barren open world to find the next match.  and for the bosses themselves, I found most of them to be incredibly boring, a tragic statement to make about a franchise that's had such absolute bangers as Destroyman, Speed Buster, and Margaret Moonlight.  most of them die way too fast to really enjoy the fight, and most don't have any unique or interesting mechanics to make them stand out from the random mooks you fight everywhere else.

the story itself felt very disjointed, something that I'm sure was intentional given the history of the series and its director, Suda 51, but nevertheless did not work in the game's favor.  the story starts with Travis talking about an old video game he never beat called Deathman, then jumps to giving Lord FU's backstory (its ET. its the plot of ET) before jumping to current day where FU's army invades Earth and blows up part of Santa Destroy.  cutscenes throughout the game vary wildly artistically, ranging from chibi animations to 1-bit DOS style computer graphics, adding to this feeling of disjointedness and making the game feel more like a series of things that happened at me rather than a coherent story.

Conclusion: While the combat was great, every other aspect of No More Heroes 3 felt worse than its predecessors and you spend far too much time in between combat encounters to really enjoy your time with the game. 5/10.